1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical caller ID apparatus and a method for same.
2. Description of Related Art
Portable communication apparatuses, such as cell phones, have become necessary tools in our daily lives. Many functions are available now with our cell phones, such as caller ID. Caller ID allows users to easily screen their calls.
Recently, caller ID functions have been developed that can audibly reveal the phone number and/or other information of a caller by the use of an electronically generated voice so that a user does not even have to look at their phone to know who is calling.
One such caller ID includes a processing unit. The processing unit obtains voice clips, which correspond to digits (0-9) of the numbers of the incoming calls, from an audio clip database, and sends the proper combination and sequence of voice clips to a voice generating chip to be output. The processing unit includes a calling number analysis device, a call number storing device, a voice clip obtaining device, and a voice clip sending device. The calling number obtaining device is for receiving the incoming call, and obtains the calling number from the incoming call. The calling number storing device is for storing the calling number in a storage of the apparatus. The voice clip obtaining device is for obtaining corresponding voice clips from the voice clip database according to the calling number. The voice clip sending device sends the obtained voice clips to the voice generation chip.
However, even though this is a convenient function, when the voice clips are used to announce the number of an incoming call, the sound of the voice clips may not be pleasing to the human ear. Each voice clip is generally comprised of one or more notes which may comprise a chord, but because each digit is only associated with one voice clip, there is no melody to a voiced phone number, it's just a series a tones or chords not musically related to each other.
Therefore, what is needed is a musical caller ID apparatus, which can identify callers using a unique sequence of audio clips of musical tones arranged in a melody.